


the ones who conquer and the ones who are left

by orphan_account



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Annie Cresta-centric, Canon Compliant, F/M, Finnick Odair-centric, Forced Prostitution, Hunger Games, Mentions of Forced Prostitution, No Dialogue, No Plot/Plotless, Pre-Canon, Victors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-15
Updated: 2019-10-15
Packaged: 2020-12-09 16:44:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20998055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Finnick knows it from the moment she's reaped. Annie Cresta will be his Victor. Amphithrite, the sea herself. Annie Cresta is a Victor by definition, even if no one but Finnick can see it.Or, a plotless piece in which Annie Cresta kicks ass in every way possible.





	the ones who conquer and the ones who are left

In the eyes of Panem, Annie had survived. And that was good, you cherish your survivor because what else do you have. In the eyes of Panem, Finnick Odair is, by definition, a Victor.

Very far from reality. Finnick's reality.

Finnick was never a Victor, just the only one left. He gets sold like a piece of meat, maybe he is, people practically eat him. His hands are stained with the blood of six tributes, he has nightmares about the blood dripping off his fingers, being the one stabbed with a trident. He's an asshole, sometimes. To Rudder and Librae and Caspian, who deserve it, to Mags and Ron and Coral and Muscida, who don't deserve it. He's suicidal, he's tired and opaque. The one who's left.

Annie, though. Annie is a Victor through and through.

He sees it from the moment she's reaped, Annie Brinné Cresta, coming from a mentally unstable family, keeping it together and doesn't smile, doesn't cry, just stares. The way she's quiet, calculating, strategist since the first step. He doesn't tell Coral or Rudder, but he does tell Mags. Annie Cresta will be his Victor. Coral and Rudder take Mallory, him and Mags take Annie. He doesn't even have to fight about it, at plain sight, Mallory's odds are much better than Annie's.

And then.

Then the Capitol love her mystery, they love her hair, they love her determination. He does, too. Annie Cresta is a strategyst. She never flirts. She always eats carbs and gains all the weight and fat she can get, she forces herself to sleep. She balances between weaponry and survival stations so the careers balance their image of her. She keeps her relationships entirely professional, and makes sure it's known in her interview, makes her story about herself, she plays it smart where it really counts. 

The way she throws a knife in Two's heart, after the dynasty decapitation of the only person she couldn't help but get attached to since she was reaped. They way she takes supplies and runs, runs, and hides, and then and just then she panics –no one interprets it like this, really, just survivors and victors. for the rest of Panem, she runs and hides like a little girl acting out of fear. yet the victors still wonder how is it that even in a mental breakdown she calculates and analyses her surroundings enough not to be eaten alive by the other careers, or the gamemakers, or both–. The way she swims, and drowns two people, and takes, and takes. 

The way she stands up with Caesar and tells him, like a secret, how she is the sea. How she is to be feared. A mermaid no more, but a siren. A goddess, Amphitrite, who takes, and takes, and takes.

Annie Cresta is a Victor by definition. Glorious in the water, a powerful being with screams of a banshee. She who talks to Snow and can count the times she's sold with her fingers, unlike Finnick, or any other Victor, really.

Annie is not mad all the time, that's not how mental illness work. There are bad days, good days, days, good and bad periods and periods, and moods and states and tears and self forgiveness. She's kind to everybody, even Snow, even the Capitol, even when people aren't around, even when they aren't being watched. Always kind, respectful, never forgiving them but always polite. 

And if she's not the Capitol's favorite, and if she has some mental relapses, and if she has panic attacks. She stands up, and during her Tour, she doesn't shred a tear. Doesn't scream, doesn't run. She has her moniker, the Mad Victor. Who cares. Everyone has a moniker. A Mad Mermaid, a Boy with the Trident, later, a Girl on Fire.

Finnick feels this sort of possessiveness with Annie. She's the first Victor he brought home, she's his Victor. 

Annie sleeps like a baby, it's during daytime that nightmares come to her. She never regrets her killings, she never looks back, even when her memories push her down, she surfaces again, swims to the shore.

Annie still surfs, she still swims, she still sails, even if her arena became a deadly ocean. If she's calm, she can still gut fish, she still sleeps, she still eats. She visits the academy, once in a while. District Four adores her, as she's always in a yellow dress wearing a flower crown, red hair as the dawn and gifting everyone collars and rings and earrings and bracelets she makes with treasures of the sea.

She often visits Mallory's family, and tells them stories of the two of them, in the train, in the rooftop and in the middle of the night drinking hot chocolate. Mallory was a funny guy, to be the situation he was in.

Annie pretends for the Capitol, she obeys, she respects, she gives as much as she can for taking, and taking, and taking five lives in the arena. She never says sorry, like Finnick, damaged, golden boy Finnick did in his Victory Tour, no. Annie Cresta never says sorry. She apologises in the most subtle way possible, with looks and Mad Mermaid moments.

Annie is a Victor because she knows, when to break, when to smile, when to heal. She performs, she obeys, she reaches certain level of internal freedom, eventually, and she falls in love.

Finnick, though, he barely speaks with people outside the Victor's Island and the Capitol, he's shit at mentoring. Finnick swallows his pain, his wounds, until they become salt water and drown him. 

Annie never drowned. She could've. Haymitch often says she's the sanest of the Victors. Finnick takes a look and couldn't agree more. He later notices Annie is capable of falling in love. Of wishing for rebellion, of dreaming about a better life. He feels more like a Victor when he learns how to fall in love with Annie.

See, Finnick hates himself with such a passion, but he loves Annie as a whole, raging and surfing, with her Victor side, with her broken side, with her self-pity and her dreamy grace, just as she loves him with his gentleness and strength and his arrogance and suicidal thoughts. He's plastic and she's glass, but it flows natural between them, like the sea outside the fence that is never on and they swim and sail and laugh until they could live just like that, glass and plastic at the sea.

Finnick wakes up one day, and a Girl on Fire has made history in Panem, just as the Mad Mermaid had made history in District Four. Haymitch is working a lot for this rebellion.

Finnick sees Annie with a flower crown in her wet hair, Amphitrite herself. He's not ready to die for a rebellion, just yet, but he's ready to die for his Victor.

**Author's Note:**

> Finnick becomes ready to die for a rebellion just after Annie stops being a Victor and becomes a survivor, just like him.


End file.
